Blake's London: Times & Spaces Author(s): Paul Miner Source: Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 41, No. 2, The Once and Future Blake (Summer, 2002), pp. 279-316 Published by: Boston University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25601560 Accessed: 18-09-2016 07:32 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Boston University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in Romanticism This content downloaded from 203.255.172.36 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 07:32:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PAUL MINER Blake's London: Times & Spaces WILLIAM Street,BLAKE what IN I bothfERUSALEM see and hear DECLARED/ In regions of "iHumanity, WRITE in IN SOUTH MOLTON Londons opening streets," and in the bio-celestial atmospheres of "The Mental Traveller" Blake "traveld thro a Land of Men ... & Women too / And heard & saw [my emphasis] such dreadful things / As cold Earth wan derers never knew," phrasing which reflects Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (a work annotated by Blake), whose extensive title mentions uthe Wonderful Things Therein, as Heard and Seen, by Emanuel Swedenborg." "A walk through London and Westminster, Or, Serious and Comical Amusements for rational Minds," an article published in the Oxford Magazine in June 1776 (pages 34-37), surmised that a "Otaheitan" would find Lon don Town "a great and uncommon animal, where the streets are so many veins where people circulate" in "the heart" of the metropolis, and in Jeru salem (33/37:29-38) "London," "A Human Awful Wonder of God," a Man-City, declares that "My Streets are my Ideas of Imagination," while "my Inhabitants, Affections, / [are] The children of my thoughts," thoughts which appear "walking within my blood-vessels," "veiny pipes" or concourses of the Heart.1 In Blakean allegory it is in the "Exchanges of London," the heart of this English city "favour'd by Commerce" ("King Edward the Third" 2:30, E 425), that redemption takes place. In Jerusalem (4:9) the solar-cardiac "Fibres of love" unite "man to man," "mutual in love divine," for in "Eternity" it is possible to "enter / Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight)" (J 88:1?5; my emphasis). Blake took note of Lavater's statement that "Each heart is a world of nations" (E 599), and in the Ex changes of London in Jerusalem (24:42-45, 27:85-86) "every Nation i. Blake's language word-plays upon a vein of thought, and his imagery deliberately revises Swedenborg's The Divine Love and Wisdom (par. 412), where the "heart corresponds to love," flowing in "arteries and veins," because "the blood-vessels from the heart" symbolize "affec tion"?which "produces thought," for "thought without affection" is "impossible." (Blake changed Swedenborg's emphasis, because Blake believed that "genius finds thought ... & thought thus produced finds sense" [E 594].) All citations to Blake are taken from The Com plete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, newly revised ed. (New York: Anchor, 1988). Standard abbreviations of Blake's work will be used in the citations. SiR, 41 (Summer 2002) 279 This content downloaded from 203.255.172.36 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 07:32:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 280 PAUL MINER walked," "Mutual each within each others bosom in Visions of Regenera tion." Such hearts reborn relate to the earthly quadrangle of the Exchange, called the "Walks," for its many porches of Commerce within were desig nated by the names of the nations (such as America, Portugal, Ireland, Norway). Swedenborg, who greatly influenced Blake, stated in The True Christian Religion (Notes 809, 811)2 that the good English after death go to the "mid dle" or heart of a spiritual London, "where there is a meeting of merchants, called the [Royal] Exchange" or the Walks. The "centre" of another "great city," also associated with London by Swedenborg, is reserved for English miscreants?those "inwardly wicked," and this City leads to an "open communication with hell" (a deduction repeated in Swedenborg's Last Judgment). In The True Christian Religion (Note 161) hell is accessed through a "grinding mill," where Swedenborg sees an "arched roof above the ground, to which there is an entrance through a cavern" (a similar descrip tion of this mill also appears in Swedenborg's The Apocalypse Revealed, par. 484).3 The Swedish philosopher "descended" into his hellish space, and upon entering Swedenborg sees an "old Man" assembling sacred "Pas sages," words "collected" by "Scribes" who then "copied them into a Book." In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (6) Blake as scribe "collected" hell's "Proverbs," and in The Marriage (pis. 17?18) Blake also speaks of a "cav ern" of the Senses that leads through a "stable & down into a church vault" at the end of which is a [starry grinding] mill" (the heavens of hell). Blake's topo/astro imagery relates to St. Mary's Church of Battersea, where Blake's marriage ties were enunciated in 1782. St. Mary's Church had a vault or crypt where burials took place during Blake's lifetime, and precisely next to the church, in 1788, was erected a huge grinding mill with stables. According to the Universal Magazine, September 1796, the horizontal mill at Battersea was converted into a mill for grinding corn, and its stables were greatly expanded for oxen, providing a "separate stall for each beast."4 An engraving of stables, church and grinding mill (which had louvers rather 2. The True Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1925). 3. The Apocalypse Revealed (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921). All other citations to Swedenborg are from works published by the American Swedenborg Society with date of publication cited in the text. 4. The mill continued as a successful enterprise. In 1808 the mill at Battersea had "exten sive bullock houses, capable of holding six hundred and fifty bullocks," animals in part "fed with the grains from the distillery"; see David Hughson, London (London, 1808) vol. v: 397. Note Frederick Shoberl, The Beauties of England and Wales: or, Original Delineations . of This content downloaded from 203.255.172.36 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 07:32:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BLAKE'S LONDON 281 than turning wings) appeared in The European Magazine (March 1804: 168), while an earlier view of St. Mary's spire and mill, a perspective from the south, is shown in Joseph Farington's View of Chelsea & battersea, from East Wandsworth, dated 1795. The mill, which strikingly dominated the Battersea landscape, Blake potentially saw as the Mill of "Natural Reli gion," for the mill at Battersea was constructed upon the site of Deist Lord Bolingbroke's former residence, and part of the mansion, Alexander Pope's "favorite study," remained preserved (see the Universal Magazine, August and September 1796, and the European Magazine, June 1801: 268.) Blake unfavorably mentions Bolingbroke in Milton (40/46:11?13) and Jerusalem (65:8). Blake was an astute recorder of what he saw and heard in London's Streets. Street cries were passed down from generation to generation, and the street-wise document of An Island in the Moon mentions the "pritty & funny" street cry of "Want Matches" (my emphasis), an enduring street song later preserved in Francis Wheatley's Cries of London (1794), where the print of a Matchboy is captioned "Do you want any Matches?" Blake's enslaved "Little Black Boy," whose "soul is white" in Songs of In nocence (1789), finds his London street-reality in the quack Gustavus Katterfelto's advertisement of early 1784, where "a little black boy," Katterfelto's runaway servant, could readily be identified because of "a little white Spot on his Forehead" (Daily Advertiser, 22 January and 23 February, 1784; my emphasis). Katterfelto's "Little black Boy," from Jamaica, accord ing to the advertisement, "sometimes" said "he had been stolen away from his Father and Mother by a Gunner of a Ship." Despite the fact Englishmen cherished the concept of liberty, England enslaved its own subjects. Blake speaks of the "thousands" of Slaves who were "carried away" from "Westminster & Marylebone in ships closd up" (J 65:33-34), and Lambeth, where Blake lived from late 1790 until late 1800, was particularly subjected to impressments. In February 1793 the Press Gangs were "very severe," for hundreds of "seamen have been laid hold of," while some three weeks later additional ships were "stripped of their hands" (Times, 18 February and 9 March 1793). On 12 January 1795 the Morning Chronicle reported that a mob in Lambeth, near the Obelisk, St. George's Fields, forcibly released prisoners from a Crimping House, after which "the empty Bastille" was chalked upon the door of the house. In July 1795, according to the Universal Maga Each County (London, 1813) vol. xiv: 97-98. See also K. G. Farries and M. T. Mason, The Windmills of Surrey and Inner London (London, 1967) 50?52. This content downloaded from 203.255.172.36 on Sun, 18 Sep 2016 07:32:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 282 PAUL MINER zine (August 1795: 732), a mob, protesting such terrible impressments, crossed Westminster Bridge and proceeded to burn the furniture of one of His Majesty's "recruiting" houses in Lambeth Road, a street running diag onally behind Blake's residence at Hercules Buildings.